The Americas

Violence in Mexico

Plateaus and pitfalls

SINCE 2006, the murder rate in Mexico has risen sharply and, apparently, inexorably. Has it now plateaued? Last year saw 22,200 murders, only slightly up on 2010's total of 20,600. This isn't exactly cheerful news. But it is at least encouraging that the high rate of increase of previous years was not repeated.

Look at the trend. Between 2007 and 2008, the number of murders rose by 29%. In 2009 it rose by 22% and in 2010 by 28%. So 2011's rise, of 8%, represents a significant slowdown. Again, to be clear, it's not time to crack open the celebratory tequila: security is not yet getting better. But it is getting worse much less quickly than before, and this is progress of sorts.

The trend is discussed in an interesting blog (in Spanish) by Alejandro Hope, a drug-war analyst, who proposes various explanations for the slowdown. Firstly, he suggests, Mexico's security forces (and their level of co-operation with colleagues in the United States) may have got better with time, hampering the violent business of the drug gangs. It may also be that after a period of territorial fighting, the gangs are settling back into a new equilibrium, involving fewer skirmishes.

The blog proposes two further, economic explanations: the demand for cocaine seems to have fallen in the United States, Mr Hope says, making the drug-smuggling business less profitable. (Others say that this might divert gangs into worse sources of income, such as kidnapping.) And he notes that Mexico's legitimate economy has perked up recently, offering jobs to young people who might otherwise have turned to a life of crime.

One drawback to the “plateau” argument, which we touched on in a recent article, is that violence hasn't actually stabilised across the country. In fact, quite the opposite: it seems to have fallen sharply in some previously dangerous places (such as the area around Tijuana) and risen equally sharply in previously safe cities (such as Monterrey). So nationwide totals have plateaued, but they hide a lot of variation and volatility at the state level.

Mr Hope makes two closing points that are worth thinking about. One is that if and when the violence does start to drop, it could drop just as quickly and unexpectedly as it took off. Part of the reason that things have got out of hand so quickly, he suggests, is that as the security forces have been overwhelmed, the likelihood of a crime being punished has diminished, causing a vicious circle of impunity. The flip side to this is that when the violence does eventually start to fall, the security forces will find their caseload more manageable, more crimes will be solved, and the vicious circle will become a virtuous one. Peace may take Mexico by surprise just as violence did.

If that does happen, there will be a scramble to claim credit for the fall in violence. By then, Mexico will almost certainly have a new government (the new president, to be elected on July 1st, will assume office in December). He or she will be happy to boast about the drop, and a new argument will begin about what, or who, caused the outbreak of peace. Mr Hope wryly notes: “Violence, like failure, is an orphan,” for which no politician wants to claim responsibility—“but peace won't have any shortage of parents.”

The Economist only speaks of violence and drug problems in Mexico, and me getting bored. I'll have to find other means of foreign information to give me a fair view of the economic achievements, political and social conditions in Mexico.

1.- No, Mexico is not undergoing a revolution. Cartels are offing each other, that's all

2.- The level of corruption in Mexico is quite average i world standards.

3.- There is no anarchy in Mexico. You may want to look up the meaning in a dictionary.

4.- Drug lords are not seen as Robin Hood, and they are not narco terrorists. They attack each other, and they attack government forces. They never do attacks against the general population for political reasons, ergo, they are not terrorists.

And since you are an expert on everything, I currently have a dry cough, no fever or anything. What medicine do you recommend I take?

General Barry McCaffrey (the drug czar in the Clinton administration) in a recent report said: “Mexico is not confronting dangerous criminality, it is fighting for survival against narco-terrorism.”

According to a 2008 US Justice Department threat assessment "Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States.”

When does the US start helping its friends and next-door neighbors instead of flying to the other side of the world to protect freedom? American must restore Democracy, and give Mexicans safe and free elections.

How many non-military Americans have been killed by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan before the invasion? Yet murdering Mexican narco-terrorists are killing Americans and Mexicans and getting way with these murders. Hard working Mexicans flee to the US for better jobs and the safety of its borders, while the US allows the thugs and narco-terrorist to continue to run Mexico and turn it into Afghanistan and Somalia.

Anarchy and Corruption are not an all-or-none proposition. It is a spectrum and some countries are more corrupt than others. Very rarely are two countries identical but they may be equivalent. And neighboring countries unfortunately are compared. Mexico has more corruption than its NAFTA members of Canada and America.

Anarchy likewise is a spectrum. If a society has 20,000 unsolved murders and leads the world in violent premature deaths exceeding even Iraq and Afghanistan which are war zones => then I would consider it partly anarchic.

Sometimes Revolution are not recognized though they fundamentally reshape society. Take the mobile phone 'Revolution' as an example. Pay phones, land lines, answering machines, and long distance calls are now gone. We now have computers, internet,email, txting and networking in our pocket on 24/7. It is hard to argue your life is not radically different than just 10 years ago.

Heroes are celebrated in words and songs. There is a contemporary mariachi music form in Mexico in ballads called Corridos. Legendary Men celebrated in songs. There is a large current of NarcoCorrido songs about drug dealers and cartel members sung romantically about their exploits. I know they are not singing ballads about mid level insurance executives who are fat, pasty and bald. Maybe Mexican culture glorifies these Narco Criminals?

Regarding your dry cough. There are two approaches: you can treat the symptoms with an antitussive and mucous expectorant. Or you can try to diagnosis and treat the underlying cause. Allergies/ Pollen? Smoker's Cough? Heart Failure and pulmonary edema? Or it may be the prodromal stage of a viral flu most typically a rhinovirus variant, very common this time of year. Muscle Aches? Others have similar illness? Assume it's the flu: Wash your hands frequently, cover your sneezes, hydrate, drink tea with honey and stay active.

When the Mexican government started its war against the cartels, it knew perfectly well that by disrupting the large cartels, they would breakdown into smaller cartels and the violence would spike. That was part of the plan, and it was certainly not a surprise. The next part of the plan is to battle the minicartels, which is happening right now. Eventually organized crime breaks down to the level of street crime, and then local police can deal with it. Or so the plan goes.

If change comes one funeral at a time, then Mexico is undergoing an un-named revolution.

It may precipitate changes at breakneck speed, for good or ill.

There is an underlying corruption, violence and anajrchy in Mexico that needs to be addressed if the nation is to succeed. It has lead to such distortions as tolerance of drug culture and drug cartels.

Drug lords are seen as Robin Hood instead of narco terrorists. It is the same with war lords in Afghanistan or mullahs in the Arab world. Killing or assassinations of this class is a good start.

lota words on this remember with out the goods there is no business and there is always the main root i still say that main root is located in south america and has been there under different names since 1940 but u are right with the doing away with this crime wave leads us to the real problem factorys making chems for the the thugs theres a big gain in middle 2011-2012 jan i give credit where credit is due fighting red tape and law brakers is not easy

Despite the "drop" in the number of murders in Mexico, what I find most disturbing is the increased use of psychopaths by money hungry drug dealers who believe that grotesque and shocking murders are better for business. The psychological impact on children who are forced to witness the ugly nature of the drug war is the story yet to unfold. The animals who deal in drugs not only feed individual chemical addictions, but they have also significantly altered the Mexican culture, and robbed children of an opportunity to know innocence and safety.

Oh, don't you worry about us in Mexico. The next president will go back to the status quo ante, namely, letting the cartels traffic their stuff freely, just like the US does, and most of the rest of the world.

Absolutely wrong. The root cause of violence in Mexico is share the border with the biggest market of illegal drugs in the world: USA. Add that USA is the supplier of weapons to mexican narcos and the problem is bigger for Mexico.

More than 20,000 people is being killed every year and you think The Economist is biased for not talking about a "strong peso"? What are those great economic achievements? Unemployment among youngsters is ramping. Also, it's TV propaganda and fear that are driving the elections on the "consolidating democracy". This goes to all the Mexicans who think it's unfair that international media writes terrible news about our country. The killings, kidnappings and violence are actually happening. So we probably should be contributing more actively to the debate instead of being ashamed by the fact that we are no longer seen only as a "wonderful country with beautiful beaches"

I love how the Economist publishes bad and only terrible news about Mexico. Willfully ignoring the great economic achievements, and the consolidating democracy of this nation. I smell Rupert Murdoch around here.

Comparing what's happening with Mexican drug gangs today with what the US went through after the Volstead Act gave our own gangsters their first big business opportunity, the evolution of violence seems to be following the same pattern. At first, when there's a new opportunity to make lots of money by illegal means, various opportunists rush in to profit from it, forming gangs that compete with each other, and that are in turn opposed by the police. All this spawns a lot of violence.

As time goes by, the control of the illegal trade becomes consolidated, increasingly by pragmatic negotiations rather than by violence. Along with this, the authorities become corrupted, so shootouts become less and less likely. In the end, the public comes to believe that violence itself is worse than whatever it was that is nominally illegal (drugs, booze, prostitution, etc) and so a detente is reached in which the sophisticated gangsters promise to reduce violence to a bare minimum and keep it out of sight, in return for the authorities agreeing to ignore the illegal trade so long as certain conditions of their own are met.

It would be nice if we could bring this tacit acceptance of vice out into the open, perhaps restricting it to red-light districts and other private indoor venues, while eliminating the opportunity for a vice-funded corrupt criminal-political organization to take control of civil government, but as long as we're conflicted about vice, I think the best we can hope for is a Pax Narcotica in which the drug lords agree to keep violence and drugs out of public view in exchange for tacit acceptance of their business and their political power.

I suppose the Mexicans could find their own J Edgar Hoover, which for better or worse would probably hasten the evolution of the gangs into something more like the American mafia and allowed to operate within a fairly tightly-circumscribed portion of society. As that happens, public violence is bound to drop off, which may be all that the ordinary citizen wants at this point. It's a hell of a way to run a democracy, but at least it's not quite a failed state.